


grass is greener

by Jydaria



Series: a change of pace [1]
Category: SPY x FAMILY (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Roleswap, a roleswap au but still mostly canon somehow, pls let them all be happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26076205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jydaria/pseuds/Jydaria
Summary: ...on the other sideDamian Forger, meet Anya Desmond. Wait, what?
Relationships: Damian Desmond & Anya Forger, Damian Desmond & Loid Forger | Twilight & Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess, Loid Forger | Twilight/Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess
Series: a change of pace [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164518
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	grass is greener

**Author's Note:**

> me: work, school, productive things to do  
> me@me: jshk fanfic  
> me@me@me: I’ve got some short spy x family drabbles. just a few WIPs but they’re all short.  
> me@me@me@me: did someone say a m u l t i c h a p t e r au idc if nobody did bc I did  
> me@me@me@me@me: wait, if you do this, you’d still have to deal with a 6 year old’s POV  
> me@me@me@me@me@me: not unless you write it from a dog’s POV  
> I did not, actually, end up planning to write from a dog’s POV *knock on wood*

Damian woke up and spent the morning cataloguing all the nerves that crept up and pounced on him ever since the mission started. He considered skipping breakfast, but there was no way he’d be able to pass that under Twilight’s—and even admittedly, Yor’s—radar. 

_ If I fail—  _

No, he couldn’t afford to think like that. He couldn’t fail. There was no room for failure. He had already come this far—as far as you could call sacrificing your first few, precious memories of family bonding with a fraud, because studying on its own was a low price to pay—it would be over for him if he failed. 

A knock on the door.

“Damian?” It was Yor. “Are you ready? How are you feeling?” 

He wouldn’t run away. Not anymore. Just a little bit more of this farce, and he’d be home. 

* * *

“This place is huge!” Yor exclaimed once they passed through the gates. Internally, Damian couldn’t help but agree, a solid weight sinking in his stomach as he took in the sheer volume of people milling about. And he was but one person—one  _ very small  _ person—among many. Would he be recognized here? But then again, he needed to be patient. He had already waited so long already—it’d have to be perfect. Maybe the entrance ceremony, to prove his worth. 

“Are you alright, Damian?” Twilight’s cool voice brought him out of his thoughts. Hopefully he didn’t spend that long staring. Either way, he had a mission to complete.

He schooled his expression and hoped his voice would be just as even, “Of course, Pa.” The word tasted like ash in his mouth. 

Not long after they continued walking, Twilight whispered, “Focus, you two. The examiners are watching us. Just stay calm and act like we practiced.” 

Hmph. Twilight didn’t need to tell him that for him to need any other reason to play along, he stubbornly restrained himself from snarking back as he saluted a statue of Benedict Ivan Goodfeller. 

“K-212, please proceed to Hall One.” An employee directed them off to one side, and Damian tried not to spy too obviously at the other people in the hall. Given that there seemed to be another mini test up ahead, he could only assume they’d passed the first stage of screening. 

“Pa, we should help that boy.” Damian heard someone with his voice say. The boy in question splashing muddy water from the gutter he was stuck in. Not that it mattered, as this was a convenient win-win to both display altruistic behavior and their (...just Twilight’s, really) preparedness. 

Brownie points successfully earned for what little he did, Damian was ready to finally continue on his way to the interview before he heard someone yell “Emergency!!” at the top of their lungs. “The animals have escaped from the rearing facilities!” 

What. On earth.

There was a horde of animals—cows, pigs, horses, goats, sheep, anteaters, an ostrich (dear god), squirrels, ...rabbits (so they...wouldn’t be distracted by their cuteness?), hawks, and...a barn owl??—stampeding their way towards the crowd of examinees. 

Dimly, he registered Twilight picking him up with one arm and saying something in that collected voice of his, but when he closed his eyes for a second, he opened them again to find himself carried by Yor. He had to hand it to Eden to putting their applicants through the most challenging situations for admission. What could he even do in this situation? He’d just have to leave it up to Twilight. Again. 

Speaking of Twilight, Yor must have passed him back to Twilight—or he had imagined her carrying him at all—because in one deft movement, Yor did something to the cow that left it immobile on the ground.

“Ah! I just happened to learn the pressure points to disable a person in yoga! I thought it might work on a cow...stop backing away, please!” Yor lost her composure for a second as the horde paused in its tracks and started backwards. Twilight himself had lost his poker face, and robotically set Damian back on the ground. 

The animals were calmed, but how to send them back on their way, he idly wondered as his legs maladroitly took him closer to the fallen cow. Really, why was he trying so hard to pass every test when it wasn’t like every applicant could do it—no, he had to remember why he’d have to stand up and above everybody else— 

“All in order, Miss Cow. There there, don’t be scared.” Another child’s voice woke him up from his haze. He snapped his head over to where a small girl with pink hair tied up into two half buns crouched near the cow, patting its snout. He hadn’t even realized someone else had the same idea as him to approach any of the animals. 

Slowly, the cow got back up and started trotting back to where it had so abruptly come from. Damian, however, paid the cow no mind. The girl—she was so  _ small— _ while having standard features that would have designated her as fairly cute...had the most  _ dull _ eyes he had ever seen. He would've guessed her poker face was more due to a lack of feeling rather than actual composure. 

“Anya.” 

Although his name wasn’t called, he had no idea why his head whipped around like it did. The girl—Anya, then—calmly got up and turned to walk away from Damian without a word to him. But Damian didn’t want to hear anything from her, anyway. The blood rushed in his head and he couldn’t focus on anything except the man a short distance away from them. So close, but so _ far. Donovan Desmond.  _ The man though, for his part, spared him no more than a cursory glance, as he would any other passerby, and held out a hand expectantly for Anya. 

Before he turned around. And walked away. 

Damian was distantly aware of his mouth moving, but heard no sound come out. It wasn’t like he had any lines prepared for this scenario, anyway (for as much he dreamed of this exact moment happening, in a variety of different places and ways, this wasn’t how he thought it would go). 

What could he say?  _ “Do you not recognize your own  _ son?” Was it simply too long to be recognized? Was he recognized, but deemed not good enough in that split second? 

For one reason or another, Anya chose that moment to turn around and look at him. Unlike earlier, he thought he saw something spark in her eyes. Before he could try to make any more sense of his thoughts, her gaze, the  _ situation, _ Twilight was outfitting him into the spare’s spare before the sole audience of Henry Henderson. 

The message, though unsaid, was crystal clear.  _ Focus on the mission, Damian.  _

* * *

He was out of it. He knew this, but he couldn’t quite shake himself free. It was a passing encounter, at best, and it threw him off his game. He was stuck in a loop of all his shortcomings, questions that led to more questions that he didn’t know the answers to, and wondering whether things were  _ really _ out of his control or if it was willful negligence against himself. 

“Nervous?” Yor offered him a reassuring smile. Twilight, as ever, sat stock still next to him, betraying nothing, if he felt anything. 

He wanted to embody confidence and deny her question, but he could only mutely shake his head. He breathed in.  _ Focus. Nothing good would have come out of earlier—you need to become an Imperial Scholar first, you already knew that. But to do that, you need to get in.  _ He let out the breath he was holding steadily. 

“May the Forgers please step this way?” Just in time to start the show.

“Please, have a seat.” Upon entering the room, he figured his seat was the lone couch at the end of the table and made his way there confidently (hopefully). 

While the examiners began questioning Twilight and Yor, Damian found it easier to display a mask of calm. All the questions were just like they practiced, and he already knew he did well enough on the written exam before this. 

The interview took a turn when, of all things, examiner Swan found a problem with Yor’s role in the household. Compared to Twilight, her role in the house had less lies and forgery, pun intended. For the first time in the mission, Damian saw Twilight lose a sliver of his composure. But soon it was back on track when examiner Evance interjected with, “my next question is for the son.” 

The questions were easy. The questions were also meant for a 6 year old, obviously (which he  _ was), _ but he had practiced these questions with Twilight enough times already for them to be child’s play (could that be counted as a pun?).

“If you had to rate your parents, how many points would you give them?” It was the first question Damian had to pause a second for, but he caught it quickly, and flashed a smile (not too big, though, of course).

“100 points, I can’t thank them enough for everything they do to raise me,” the words slipped out easily enough. Cheap. Forger, what a fitting name. “Every day is full of surprises.” That, at least, was true. 

“Then who scores higher? Your new mom or your old one?” examiner Swan looked too smug. Damian wanted to punch his smile and mustache off his smarmy face, but that was an obvious one-way ticket to failure. Anyway, as it was, it was like the question knocked the air out of him, and he tried to find something to recenter himself with before answering—it shouldn’t have come out of left field, Twilight  _ said _ they were going to be suspicious about the “remarriage”—until he realized he was having trouble breathing because he was crying. 

Why couldn’t they have asked about his father—because they wouldn’t know, of course they didn’t, why would they know? But that question, at least, he wouldn’t have had any hesitation with. 

A loud crack brought him back to the room proper  _ (focus _ on the mission, Damian). “Excuse me, there was a mosquito on the table.” Twilight didn’t sound like he had just punched a table in half. He sounded like he was commenting on the weather. “Thank you for your time.” And with a few other pleasantries exchanged (if it could be called that), Yor helped shuffle the three of them out of the room. 

Well, if the interview wasn’t ruined when he started crying, it sure was ruined now. 

* * *

Somehow, the three of them were all on the same wavelength, because they each collectively (without prior discussion) decided to collapse onto the couch without changing out of their formal wear. 

“I’ll go make some tea,” Yor stood up after who knew how long to head over to the kitchen. 

Maybe he should say something, ask if examiner Swan’s words were bothering her. But that tiny bit of concern was pushed aside by the mounting feeling of doom—of wondering what the rest of his life would look like now that he well and truly definitively failed the Eden Academy interview. There was no way Donovan Desmond would take note of an Eden rejectee, if he could hardly be bothered to pay attention to Eden students that weren’t Imperial Scholars. 

“I’m sorry,” someone said. Twilight looking at him made him realize that he was the one that said it. He didn’t know why he said it, though, so he didn’t say anything else in response to Twilight’s probing gaze.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Yor jumped in once she returned with a tray of tea, albeit not very convincingly, “It’ll all work out!” 

“Well,  _ que será, será,” _ Twilight said, the show-off. “But first I need to thank you two for working so hard to prepare for this exam.” Right. There was no room to stop acting, even in his own “home.” 

“To a bright future for our family!” Twilight toasted, and Damian took comfort in the warmth from the cup as he raised it up with both hands. 

Something clattered from behind them, as if in response. When they got up from the sitting area to investigate, Twilight and Yor had pause at the realization that it was their “family” photo. 

_ Maybe I should have nailed that one in properly.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Reread through the manga to copy some dialogue (which is why some of it might be familiar, but hopefully not too redundant). 
> 
> Also, in the beginning of one chapter at some point, the narrator says that the iron curtain falls after 10 years. I have no idea where I’m going with this plot, but I don’t think I’m taking it for 10 fic years lol (irl years though...jk...unless...). Who knows—I don’t know, you don’t know, none of these characters except Bond know—buckle up it’ll be great


End file.
